Garth Marenghi interviews Mike Flanagan



Marenghi—a.k.a. comedian Matt Holness, who’s been playing the character for 25 years at this point, most notably through his beloved cult comedy series Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace—interviewed Flanagan for his new web series Garth Marenghi’s Skull-Flusherwhich bills itself as a series of conversations betwixt various “terror titans.” And Flanagan (pronounced, according to Marenghi, like “fluh-noggin”) makes for an incredibly game opening gambit for the series. He’s clearly a fan of Darkplacefor one, happily devouring all of Marenghi’s odd non-sequiturs and batshit novel plots with only the occasional break of character. Even more amusing, though, is the writer-director’s ongoing attempts to apply his own horror perspective—which, as fans of his various works know, doesn’t shy away from the metaphorical underpinnings behind various monsters and supernatural evils—to the ravings of a man who once famously declared that subtext is for cowards. (An especially good extended bit sees Flanagan try to convince Marenghi that there’s wider societal concerns to be pulled out of his novels about mankind racing to create a gigantic hook capable of catching “a killer haddock.”)

Marenghi/Holness has reportedly launched the web series as a way to promote his upcoming book, This Bursted Earthwhich, like the earlier Garth Marenghi’s TerrorTomethreatens to bring the character’s glorious incompetence out of the world of fiction and into a reality where you can actually hit someone over the head with it. Honestly, though, we’ll take as much of this as we can get. Holness can live and breathe Marenghi’s deep, wonderfully unearned pomposity basically on instinct at this point, and seeing him abruptly cut off Flanagan’s praise of “Mr. Stevie King” in order to ask why he hasn’t adapted a real classic,  like the author’s own The Dankor his book Bitchfinder General (“It’s about an outbreak of downward erections in rural 17th century England”), is a genuine joy to behold.